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Tomochichi pledged Creek loyalty to King George and Queen Caroline of England

Source: Invention of the Creek Nation #95

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Through the ages the city of London has seen its share of foreigners come and go, but rarely has it been treated to the spectacle that took place between July and October 1734. That year a small delegation of Creek Indians traversed the “great water” and became the first of their people ever to set foot on English soil. The Creek dignitaries had come by invitation of James Edward Oglethorpe, the leader of the new colony named Georgia in honor of the British king, George II. At the head of the Creek delegation was an elderly man named Tomochichi who had befriended Oglethorpe a year earlier and had granted Oglethorpe permission to plant his new colony on the Savannah River. 
Oglethorpe recognized that Georgia’s survival required the favor and protection of the Creek Indians, whose proximity to the Catholic powers made them a valuable ally and a potentially dangerous foe. Tomochichi, the leader of a nearby group of Creeks known as the Yamacraws, was the critical intermediary between the Creeks and the Georgians. Thus when Tomochichi’s party arrived in London that July, British officials went to extraordinary lengths to impress upon them the grandeur and benevolence of the British state. On August 1, Tomochichi and his followers were privileged enough to meet with King George and Queen Caroline, who dutifully listened as Tomochichi pledged his friendship.
As the London press had it, Tomochichi’s visit with the royal couple was a festive affair marked by numerous symbolic acts that renewed the ancient peace between the English monarchy and the Creek Indians. Gentleman’s Magazine, a popular London periodical, portrayed Tomochichi as the king of an entire “Creek nation” and loyal to King George. Not everyone in London at the time, however, was naïve enough to accept the shallow glossing of a men’s magazine as the truth. It just so happened that Joseph Ramos Escudero, who was in London on a secret mission for the Spanish governor of Florida, had come to spy on Tomochichi and his followers.
Disguised as a Dutch diplomat, Escudero, a Franciscan friar, infiltrated the British court and gained access to the Creek visitors. Escudero soon became suspicious, though, when he noticed the absence of several influential Creek men, especially Yahoulakee, whom Escudero believed was the “emperor” of Coweta. A somewhat confused Escudero therefore surmised that Tomochichi’s party was nothing but an assemblage of minor chiefs and that Tomochichi was a mere pretender to Yahoulakee’s position. To verify his suspicions, Escudero at one point turned to a Creek man sitting beside him in court and asked sarcastically, “When will I see the Emperor of Coweta?” The Creek man, hesitant to reveal the emperor’s absence, replied defensively, “I don’t know, [but] he is here.”
For several weeks Escudero lingered like a phantom in the shadows, needling the Creek diplomats for further information about Yahoulakee and the visiting chiefs. Eventually Escudero directed his questions to the Creek interpreter, John Musgrove, who was forced to admit that the new emperor of Coweta was not in London but pleaded that “he had been begged to come, but . . . was afraid of the sea.” Musgrove, in order to gloss over this inconvenient matter, responded by styling Tomochichi as the “second man” in the nation to whom the present chief of Coweta and others might defer in times of war or other serious matters. The Creeks added their own spin, stating that the English had crowned Yahoulakee supreme king eight or nine years prior, and had given him a crown, a scepter, and a suit of “popish vestments” believed to have been worn by the British king. These attempts, Escudero was informed, were not received with general applause because Yahoulakee was a “cruel and barbarous” leader and because the Indians in general did not recognize such absolute authority.